Dell PowerVault DL2000 - Manual (Page 2)

Centralized Management
2 October 2008
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The PowerVault DL2000– Powered by Symantec Backup Exec offers the industry’s only fully inte-
grated backup-to-disk solution with software factory installed. Dell and Symantec have co-
developed this offering to give you easier management capabilities of the backup-to-disk environ-
ment. It’s an ideal way for any IT department to achieve faster, more reliable backups and re-
stores. In addition, the appliance offers simplified centralized management that delivers a robust
and scalable solution for managing multiple Backup Exec media servers. This functionality lets IT
administrators maximize a Backup Exec software investment by providing centrally managed op-
erations, load balancing features, fault tolerance, monitoring, and reporting for many Backup Exec
media servers and PowerVault DL Backup-to-Disk Appliances, whether in a Windows data center
or distributed throughout the network.
Small, medium, and large organizations or enterprises face an explosive growth of data that must
be protected and backed up. This challenge is made more difficult by the movement from stand-
alone Windows server backup to backup over the LAN and by the need to manage multiple
backup servers centrally and efficiently with constrained IT resources. The trend toward LAN-
based backup is driven largely by two factors. First, valuable data resides on servers inside and
outside the data center, so it must be backed up from multiple sources. Second, the limitations of
traditional stand-alone Windows server backup architecture add to the complexity of day-to-day
management. As a result of these limitations, IT or backup administrators are faced with:
•
Time-consuming administration of multiple stand-alone backup servers
•
Consistent backup failures
•
Inability to proactively monitor all active jobs on multiple media servers
•
Inefficient usage of storage resources
•
Lack of central reporting of the entire storage environment
•
Insufficient system information and lack of timely alerts
Remote offices and distributed networks offer a different set of challenges to those companies
unable or unwilling to consolidate their data protection and storage management in a central loca-
tion. The development and setup of backup jobs requires an immense amount of time when
many backup servers are deployed in the environment. This effort is magnified when backup serv-
ers are remotely distributed from the main enterprise area. Proactive monitoring of media server
activities and the ability to report on backup, restore, and a highly distributed backup environment
storage management activities are essential to an organization’s ability to effectively manage a
highly distributed storage network.